Way Huge Supa-Puss Pedal Review

If you have any enthusiasm for the art
and craft behind stompbox building,
you have to love the story of Jeorge Tripps.
Tripps, of course, is the man behind the
original Way Huge, a short-lived stompbox
company that’s arguably one of the real
vanguards of the effects-pedal renaissance
in which we now live. From 1992 to 1999,
Tripps designed and built more than a few
classics. His Swollen Pickle, Red Llama,
Green Rhino, and Aqua-Puss could be
found in the rigs of everyone from bedroom
tone snobs to touring pros. And when
Tripps closed the doors on his original
operation, the rush on his wares on eBay
and elsewhere bordered on maniacal.

Needless to say, Way Huge Mk I is not
the beginning and end of this story. Thanks
to Dunlop, an outfit that has obviously long
harbored a rather substantial appetite for
stompbox adventure, Jeorge Tripps has again
been tinkering in his mad-scientist’s laboratory
and bringing his forward-thinking
visions to life since 2008. One of the latest
offspring from Tripp’s expansive imagination
is the Supa-Puss, a formidable bucket brigade
analog delay with what seems like
almost infinite sound-coloring potential.

Aqua-Puss Through a Wormhole
Players familiar with either the original Way
Huge line or the current Dunlop-made
reissues already know the Aqua-Puss, a
straight-ahead and dead-simple—but highly
effective and rich—analog delay that a lot
of guitarists have cherished for years. As the
name implies, in many ways the Supa-Puss
is an evolution of the Aqua-Puss—and certainly
the same lush repeats that made the
Aqua-Puss such a prize are present here. But
where the Aqua-Puss was about as streamlined
as delays come, the Supa-Puss is more
akin to Willie Wonka’s factory in analog-delay
form—fun, full of surprises, and at
times even a little scary.

For the most part, any Aqua-Puss user
would be at ease with the Supa-Puss’ most
essential controls—a delay time knob that
ranges up to 900 ms, a
feedback control, and a mix
knob. And as you get to
know the Supa-Puss, it’s best
that you acquaint yourself
with the way these familiar
controls interact and shape
your sound. Indeed, that
process is almost essential,
because the extent to which
the wealth of other controls
can tweak, massage, twist,
damage, and otherwise pervert
your basic delay tone is
impressive, to say the least.

At the heart of this
secondary control set is a
4-subdivision tempo control
that’s accessed by pressing
the feedback knob. Pushing
the knob, which yields with
a dull but satisfying click, enables you to
scroll through quarter-note, dotted-eighth,
eighth-note-triplet, and 16th-note subdivisions.
And though it takes the right footwear
(combat-boot wearers need not apply),
the switch has just enough resistance and
is spaced far enough from the other controls
that you can actuate it with your foot.
Pressing and holding the feedback control
unlocks the gate to far weirder realms—a
chase mode that runs through the subdivisions
in various orders (ascending, descending,
random, alternating, and combination)
that can be selected by pressing the feedback
knob. And like any box-of-a-billion-tricks
delay worth its salt, there’s a tap-tempo
function so you can dial in exactly the
speed you want when things get nutty.

In general, the other four controls
impart tape-delay-style textures and control.
The two mini knobs on the far left
are called depth and speed. As the names
suggest, they control the intensity and rate
of delay modulation—effectively replicating
the wow and flutter of an aging Echoplex.
The two mini knobs on the right control
gain and tone. Gain boosts the delayed
signal and adds a gritty overdrive when
you crank it. More timid settings yield a
more crystalline but still distinctly analog
tone. The tone knob also seems Echoplex
inspired, with the capacity to lend a cloudy
and mysterious haze of magnetic-tape
entropy when set full counterclockwise or
add clarity, definition, and presence to your
delay signal when set all the way to the
right. Adding an expression pedal enables
you to control the delay time and create
radical pitch-shifting effects.

Supa-Interstellar
In the simplest application of the Supa-Puss’ capabilities, the output from the
Tripps-engineered circuit is warm and deep.
From lush, Gilmour-style echoes to more
percussive Edge-style delays, the tones are
round and robust enough that you can be
fairly conservative with the mix control
and more aggressive with the feedback and
delay rate controls to create a beautifully
atmospheric base delay. At these settings,
the quarter-note subdivision works well for
spacious leads and slide. The eight-note and
eighth-note-triplet settings, however, lend
a percussive quality and a sort of morning-sunlight-refracting-through-dewdrops
shimmer to arpeggios. It’s a spacious range
of sounds that work great for intros and
rhythm parts in particular.

Any guitarist with experimental tendencies,
who fills the role of texturalist in a
band, or who tinkers endlessly in the studio
will love the tailoring and tweaking potential
of the deeper functions. The wide-ranging
depth and speed modulation controls
can be used to apply just a touch of tape-style
warble and vintage-studio ambience
that lends old-school authenticity to slapback
delays or a submarine quaver to longer
ones. Aggressive depth and speed settings
can make longer delays sound positively
queasy. Max the mix, though, and you
can inhabit otherworldly lo-fi zones and
approximate the tones of fractured intergalactic
radio transmissions—a texture that
becomes especially musical and well suited
to a band situation when you crank the
tone knob for a little additional presence.

If you need to get freakier still, the chase
function is a little like having one of James
Bond’s secret weapons from Q Branch in
your back pocket. While just about all the
settings will unleash a measure of sonic
dementia, the random mode is particularly
bonkers. That said, when you mix it a little
lower than your dry signal it can contribute
a delicious heap of mayhem to a simple
chord vamp or a droning, one-chord climax.

The Verdict
You’d have to look far and wide to find an
analog delay that can deliver more sound-shaping
potential from a compact package
than the Way Huge Supa-Puss. In the most
basic applications, it delivers warm, rich,
clear echoes that can hang with the most
classic analog units. But the wealth of modulation
and tone-shaping tools and extensive
tempo-regulation controls make the
Supa-Puss capable of keeping up with some
of the more impressive, cutting-edge digital
units. And perhaps the only drawback to
all that versatility is that, as an analog unit,
there are no presets for managing all of your
tone-crafting options.

At almost 250 bucks, it’s hardly inexpensive.
But the price is competitive with a lot of
comparable analog units that deliver of fraction
of the Supa-Puss’ power. And if you’re
a guitarist who wears a lot of hats—ambient
texturalist one night, roots rocker the next—the Supa-Puss may just be the one pedal that
stays in your rig for every occasion.

Gear Editor Charles Saufley is a career writer and editor from San Francisco. Before joining Premier Guitar he served as Associate Editor at Acoustic Guitar magazine (where his predecessor was esteemed PG Editor in Chief Shawn Hammond.) He became music obsessed not long after birth—thanks in no small part to older siblings who ‘babysat’ him with a set of headphones, Revolver, and Sticky Fingers. Charles still spends a lot of time listening to records. And his many git-fiddle heroes include Roger McGuinn, Pete Townshend, Tom Verlaine, Eddie Phillips, Nokie Edwards, Gabor Szabo, John Cippolina, Randy Holden, Erkin Koray, Greg Ginn, and Sonic Youth.

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